In 1991, the Washington City Paper gave out "Norman Ornstein Awards" to seven "overexposed media quotemeisters" -- named for the man who was, at the time, the most quo-biquitous of them all.

Today, Ornstein and the Normie award winners still dominate the field, pumping out sound bites like a Vietnamese sweatshop churns out sneakers -- low cost, quick, well-crafted and with something to fit everyone.

But there's one crucial difference in a sweatshop: women.

In early 2005, the national media burst into a frenzy of self-examination, sparked by a fiery e-mail exchange between L.A. Times opinion editor Michael Kinsley and Fox News' Susan Estrich over the lack of women in the American punditocracy.

Quotemeister careers often begin on the op-ed pages, where a scholarly voice gains the sheen of expertise in the eyes of reporters and editors. Quotes beget quotes, and pretty soon the calls become steady.

So it's little surprise that the dearth of female perspective on the op-ed page is reflected in the quotemeister pool. It's the classic cause-and-effect relationship.

The seven winners from '91 were all men, as they would be if the awards were given out again today. In fact, at least three of the champs -- Larry Sabato, Bruce Fein and Stephen Hess -- are still in their prime. (And, of course, Ornstein is still quoting strong.)

In the last six months, Ornstein, a longtime scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has appeared in 579 articles, more than three a day, according to a Nexis search. He's obscure compared with the University of Virginia's Sabato, with 1,184 mentions. Along with Brookings scholars Stephen Hess (362) and Thomas Mann (376), the group has painted more context and saved more reporters on deadline than probably the rest of academia combined.

A Nexis representative said that the search results do not include duplicate AP and other wire stories, but the results showed several instances in which the same story ran in multiple papers. That means that Sabato didn't actually return 1,184 calls -- but the fact that the quotes are in wire stories that run nationwide most certainly increases the quotemeisters' exposure.

The Politico, just three months old, is already a steady customer of these discount quips, having tapped the quote firm of Mann, Ornstein and Sabato 21 times. And we've called on one of the newer entrants into the public intellectual ring, Boston University's Julian Zelizer, four times. (In two of his four appearances in The Politico, Zelizer wrote his own columns.) Well, it'll be five pretty soon.

Sabato, who took 62 minutes to reply to an e-mail requesting comment, said he gets a lot of unfair flak from the press for his quote-making facility, as if he's out asking reporters to interview him.

"I'm not sitting here waiting for them," he said. "I use that index finger hitting the delete button, as I've done numerous times today. I have no interest in returning most of the calls." (See how quotable he is? That makes reporting easy.)

Sabato agrees. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm doing you a favor by talking to you. You're not doing me a favor."

Often he does the favor on deadline. Sabato said he gets most of his calls beginning at 5:15 p.m., when reporters are crashing and need something to fill out a story.

Thomas Mann, gifted with a scholarly name, said he also knows that he's doing reporters a favor and tries to call every one of them back. "My dear friend Norm Ornstein returns almost every call. I wish I could say the same," he said.

Mann reports getting chided occasionally by colleagues for his many public declarations, but he's unconcerned. "Most of them are jealous," he said. "They'd love to play more in a policy domain and are happy to answer questions." They just don't get called as much.

Calls from reporters don't come from nowhere; relationships are nurtured and a reputation is studiously built with pithy observations and a quick call back. Zelizer, now at Boston University, learned the trade by watching Mann when Zelizer was a researcher at Brookings.

It was one of Zelizer's goals, he said, to play a role in national political and policy debates as opposed to merely fortifying himself on a college campus. "It's very important to me," he said. "You can reach many more people than with any single book."

Zelizer said that now that his name is out there, he has a steady supply of calls, often from the same reporters. "I can almost expect their call when certain news breaks," he said, declining to give names but saying that The New York Times often rings him up.

Indeed, Zelizer does have fans in the Times' newsroom: A search of the paper's archives brings up 18 stories in which he appears -- nine written by the same two reporters.

When asked who they thought were some of the most active female intellectuals on politics and public policy, Zelizer and Sabato suggested I contact Susan MacManus, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Sarah Binder and Theda Skocpol, all women with impressive academic credentials who occasionally appear as experts in print.

MacManus, a professor at the University of South Florida, got back to me late in the evening and suggested that the lack of female quotemeisters originates locally and in the academy.

"You get your start in commentary at the state and local level, and women have been late getting into political science. Politics wasn't what you went into. More women got into (studying) women in politics only and stuff like that," she said, referring to women's political studies and the like.

Binder, a Brookings scholar and George Washington University professor, responded the next day -- a century late in journalist time -- to confirm MacManus' analysis. "I would think of it as, for lack of better terms, supply and demand," she said, showing her knack for the quotable quip. "On the supply side, clearly the ability of journalists to have a balance of women and men in terms of who they give some voice to depends on the supply."

There's another possible explanation: Maybe it's just not their top priority. Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, didn't return the call. Skocpol's assistant politely passed on word that Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard, wished me luck with the article but wouldn't be able to help.

Even though she found time to speak to The Politico -- again, weighing in a little late as these things go -- Binder hinted that it isn't easy when she said, "I teach full time, and it's exam time."

Then again, Sabato teaches full time, too.

As post-debate analysis dominates the political news cycle, it's high season for the quotable pundit. And they have plenty of practice at their craft.